Tuesday, April 24, 2012

THE NME AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

I haven’t
read NME since I returned to the UK. I fact I wasn’t sure if my old print era
stomping ground was still in business. Then our pal Skylaire posted the
following on Facebook. Seems things are not good at the venerable rag – where,
back in the day, we snorted speed and
drank to excess – the new generation are now messing around with focus groups.
Hardly good news. I’ve heard that focus groups can lead to harder and more
addictive corporate foolishness.

“Well, I suppose a Happy Birthday is in order. This week the
New Musical Express celebrates the 60th anniversary of its publication and
while the paper was a crucial part of my life as a music fan it's now somewhat
sad to see it floundering.

When I first bought it back in the early 70s it was a
conduit to another world. Not only did the NME keep me informed on a weekly
basis as to what was happening in rock'n'roll but it was extremely adept at
tipping me off as to what might well happen a few months down the road. When
the paper sensed that the musical winds were changing in the mid-70s they were
first off the mark, dispatching Charles Shaar Murray to New York to check out a
nascent club scene which came to be known as Punk Rock. As a 17 year-old full
of vim and vigour this was like a call to arms and when Mick Farren penned the
famous article The Titanic Sails at Dawn, urging youngsters to form a band
rather than complain that the music they were being fed was rubbish, it had the
desired effect.” (Click here for more)

6 comments:

in the early 7t's I too was an avid reader of the NME, bought it on the way home from skool on a Wednesday afternoon, from a news-vendour outside Marble Arch..PUB-ROCK was the flavour of the day,fuckin' second rate copy of American styles, by people who should have known better, then again Black Echoes was my back up read..Steve Barrows was the first 'white-boy' who had his finger on the pulse..remember their was too many tribes, the world was a grey place & Joe Strummer was Woody Guthrie Clone..did ya no harm hahaHa

whats an easy target. The NME always gets a slagging. I bet it did in your day Mick.Times have changed in print media so its a miracle that they still sell around 27,000 a month (1 million on hits a month on the web).I think the NME needs some praise for its survival and I hope it carries on I also recently bought a copy and was impressed. It looked good and the writing wasn't so bad as I assume the writers are 25 or more years younger than myself. The problem with most NME haters is they have grown out of it and now cannot relate, they would rather keep listening to the music that they are familiar with than looking up some new bands and driving 120 miles to a back room in a pub to check out a new group. The last issue I saw had, on the cover, some tearaway smoking a fag and giving the bird with the title David Cameron be very afraid. Well good attitude I say after all its a IPC publication. One other thing is the NME is a weekly music paper, that in its self must be a major headfreeze finding enough to interest the reader 7 days after that last issue.And also Mick if it means anything, i'm sure that the writers are still snorting the sherbet and getting pissed as much as your lot were doing nearly 40 years ago. Although I hope there isn't as much skag as you lot were getting through.

hmm.the nme went off the boil in the early `80s with barney hoskin`s idiotic `rock against rock` i read it a couple of years ago & it had more in common with smash hits than it`s earlier self.i suppose it really mirrors the bland corporate bands these days,give`em what they want.or what we`ve told them they want.

wanna know wot really killed the NME & others..it's two words..DANCE MUSIC..where deliberately faithless; basely treacherous, perfidious Albion went raving around the M-25..when the mode of the music changes the walls of the city will shake..I had a gr8 time..hahaHa